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Author: Gretchen Kelly

Dreamer, optimist, mother of three. I'm a wanna-be groupie: fan of music, books and movies. I am completely in awe of talent and those who posses it, intrigued by cultural phenomenons and their impact, and passionate about many things. I love to write but people reading my stuff makes me feel like I'm walking around naked. My desire to write supersedes my insecurities... at least for today. These things I write are the kinds of things I think about in the shower and are a supreme act of self indulgence.

“A lie can travel around the world and back again, while the truth is lacing up it’s boots.” – Mark Twain

Words have power. They ignite revolutions, start wars, or they calm tensions. Words can enlighten, or they can spread dangerous lies. Societies have risen and fallen based on words alone.

Which is why the words the news media chooses are so important.

The media’s ability to frame the issues and the influence they have on our public consciousness is unmatched. Why else would political campaigns spend millions on messaging? Why else would autocrats go to great lengths to control the media? The news media is the fourth estate, an institution in our country. So powerful, it’s considered a check on political power.

And nowhere is their power and influence more constant and enduring – no matter the season, the year, the decade – than when reporting on rape and sexual assault.

The words the media uses are relentless. They permeate our gray matter. We absorb them. When we hear or read a word enough times, it comes tumbling out of our own mouths unbidden. Words have a unique way of influencing thoughts and molding assumptions without us even realizing it.

Which is why the vague words the media uses to report rape and sexual abuse are so damaging. Why euphemisms and distortions are dangerous.

Tepid headlines about rape and abuse minimize the violence. When rape is called “sex,” the victims are framed as willing participants. When the rape/assault/murder is not called what it is, violent acts are protected. Every time the media fails to report the naked truth, it is serving the abusers. The desire by the media to not make us uncomfortable causes real and lasting harm to victims of abuse. And it makes future assault that much easier and more likely to go unpunished.

For every one negative thing a person is told, five positives must be told to counteract it. This is the power and the danger of words. For every lie told, the truth has to climb a bigger hill to be heard. For every misconception and minimization of sexual violence, victims have to speak out about their abuse.

Again.

Louder.

Resurrecting trauma and opening old wounds until society takes notice and listens. And then, wait for dozens more to do the same before anyone believes them.

There are few things on this Earth more powerful than words.

And every time the media sanitizes rape and abuse, it not only minimizes abuse and life long trauma, it offers a helping hand to predators.

And it happens all the time.

“Sixteen Year Old Prostitute Kills Man,” is a lie. A sixteen year old is a victim of child sex trafficking. But we don’t like to think about children being sexually abused and bought and sold. We prefer to think that she must have been at fault, that a child who can’t consent to medical treatment is old enough to consent to being sold for money. This is the cognitive dissonance that our culture and our media reinforces and likes to wrap itself in. After all, centuries of sexual abuse of altar boys in the Catholic Church didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was allowed. By hushed voices and looking away.

“Woman In Coma Gives Birth,” is a lie of omission. It ignores the the crucial part of the news- that a woman in a vegetative state for 27 years was raped. But reading about a vulnerable woman in a coma is a lot harder to swallow with your morning coffee. We’re much more comfortable with the lie that a woman who can’t speak or move can consent to sex.

“Woman Died” is a whisper of a headline. “Husband Kills Wife,” is a scream that matches the violence and ongoing epidemic of domestic abuse that society prefers to ignore. One we say is a “private matter.” An issue to be “dealt with in the marriage.” What better way to keep our hands clean, after all? What better way to not have to deal with the fact that thousands of women and children die every year at the hands of angry men?

When the news media can’t bear to call rape, rape and to call lies, lies, victims are left to fend for the truth themselves. Not only is the media lying when it refuses to use the correct words, it is perpetuating violence against victims.

The medias lies and evasions support rape culture. They feed it. And just so we’re clear, there is a direct line between rape culture – a society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and abuse – and violence against children and women and the LGBT+ community.

Sanitized reporting on sexual violence absolves rapists and pedophiles of their responsibility. Is this the editor’s or writer’s intent? Probably not. Their intent is to make the subject more palatable to readers. But rape and sexual abuse should not be palatable. The idea that we need to avoid discomfort is precisely why this problem persists at epidemic proportions. This is the intersection of rape culture and purity culture.

Purity culture uses women’s bodies to sell products, but revolts at a bare breast feeding a baby. Purity culture refuses to teach it’s children about autonomy and consent and reproductive rights and birth control, for fear it will induce promiscuity- yet turns away when those same children are sexually assaulted and raped. In purity culture women and children are to serve as props. To stroke egos and stroke men. We are to take the abuse and stuff it down, not speak up about it. We are to be proper and polite and absolutely, unflinchingly accommodating in our manner and speech. And when we are abused at the hands of those more powerful, we are only allowed to whisper of it to people who aren’t in a position to help.

This is what the media is endorsing and selling every time they diminish violence against our bodies and souls.

The ripple effect of how it’s reported is never ending. It shows up in how law enforcement and District Attorneys interpret a victim’s story. In pop culture. In the way schools and churches try to cover it up. You see it when judges and juries and neighbors refuse to believe victims. When society treats the victims like a collaborator. An accomplice in their own abuse.

When you do this, dear media, you are telling every little child who has had their soul shattered by sexual abuse that they were complicit. You are telling every teen girl who gets groped by grown men that they are to silence the sick feeling. You tell every person living in denial about what is going on in their own home or their school or church that sticking their head in the sand is not only acceptable, but how polite society handles such unsavory subjects. You tell every man who has the desire to rape and abuse that you’ve got his back and you will soften his sick cruelty when you speak of it to the world.

Every time you water it down or sanitize the truth you perpetuate rape myths. The myth of the false accuser. The myth of the victimless crime. The myth that rape is only rape if it’s in a dark alley at the hands of a stranger. And cuts and bruises better be present or it’s not “legitimate rape.” The myth that a victim’s clothes render a predator unable to control their actions. Every single one of these myths you’re feeding is weaponized against victims- in courtrooms and in jury pools and in schools and the town rumor mill. These are the things whispered in the ears of victims who fight back. It’s what rapists tell their victims “no one will believe you, you filthy whore. You know you want it. You asked for it.” Intentional or not, you’re sending the same message as every abuser and rapist in their most violent moments. It’s as if you lifted his script and cleaned it up for the evening news.

And you wonder why victims don’t report.

When news reports of rape or sexual abuse are doused in antiseptic, the lie travels around the world twice before survivors have even had a chance to speak their truth. The retractions and corrections will land with a dull thud, barely making a sound. Your words are carnival music playing during the carnage scene of a bad movie. One that they are trying to rewrite with every breath and every step forward. And it leaves victims feeling alone in a world that doesn’t want to see or hear what they can’t forget.

And with each muddled headline the media looks increasingly like the puppet, with the likes of R. Kelly, and Harvey Weinstein – and every other disgusting abuser bloated with his own self imposed entitlement – pulling your strings. From the creepy network executive, to the slimy anchor with a door lock button under his desk, to the filthy man grabbing girls on the bus, you are their flunky. Repeating their message for them, taking the horrors they’ve visited upon the innocent and making it sound not that bad, really.Brave people are coming forward to tell their stories. And each of them is showing the world what truth looks like, making the lie harder for you to sell.

What would happen, dear media, if you stopped shrouding the truth in soft words? What would happen if the news spoke to these things plainly, clearly, every time?

Maybe it won’t take 265 women coming forward before a man receives due justice and is finally stopped from abusing young girls.

Maybe rape kits will get processed and rapes will get prosecuted.

Maybe we’ll start believing victims. One single victim. Without a chorus of victims behind them.

Maybe judges won’t hand out light sentences for predators and maybe fathers of rapists won’t call it “twenty minutes of action” and maybe the public will stop worrying about a college-bound rapist’s future and maybe children will actually be safe in their homes and their schools and their churches and at sports practice and maybe women will be able to go to college without being one in four and maybe women will be able to go to work without their bodies being groped while their ideas are ignored and maybe black trans women will not be murdered and immediately forgotten and maybe you can see that this is a very real problem you’re perpetuating every time you speak of it softly.

Maybe it won’t take a hashtag movement before the world starts believing the stories we’ve been telling. The stories that have existed since the beginning of time, yet somehow half the population is bewildered at all the #MeToo’s.

Maybe victims can take a break from the fight for truth about abuse. Because we’re tired of carrying water for the media and a society that doesn’t want to hear or see it.

Maybe our children will grow up in a different world. One that no longer offers shelter to abusers.

Those who’ve opened up their wounds to bleed, to right the wrongs still being done, will not stand by while the media continues to soft-peddle acts of violence. We will scream the truth until it circles the globe, before the limp words drip out of your mouth.

Dear media, words matter. The false propriety you hide behind is a facade. An excuse. They make you the collaborator. The mouthpiece of the predators. The foothold to power structures that profit off of victims. They make you complicit, even if you didn’t intend to be a participant.

Like this:

Sexual assault is like a death. A death of who you would have been. Who you were before. It is a violation of the body and the mind, but most profoundly, the soul. Many of us survive by allowing that part of us, the innocent part, to die.

I died many years ago, that part of me. There were moments when I thought he would kill me. And in a way, he did. He killed the little girl who danced instead of walked. He killed the little girl who looked at the world in wonder. I could have held on to her and let her live, but I had to let her go.

This is how I survived what he did to me. I was three, maybe four. I can’t be sure because the details of mundane facts are secondary to the horrors I can’t escape. The date, the season, his last name- all facts that are blurred by the senses. By the fear that gripped my belly. By the smells and the sounds and the tastes. He was 18. Still a boy? Almost a man? Acting out youthful urges? Or a sick person who couldn’t see me as human?

I didn’t tell anyone. Not telling was crucial to my survival. If I’d told, if I’d been forced to tell, it would have killed the new me. The one who was trying to put a life together after her death. I don’t think I could have survived two deaths. So I buried it deep, refused to talk about it, pushed away the memories that would creep back with persistence. I buried her, but she was always there. The things that happened to her were the background noise in my life. I got so used to it that I was able to forget it was there. Until something reminded me. A smell. A sound. A name. A nightmare.

This is how I went through life for thirty six years. Ignoring her ghost. Shoving the memories away as soon as they crept into my conscious. I was determined to be fine.

This is what we do. We survive, we shed the ghost of who we were, who we could have been. We move on and move forward. And most of us never tell.

Shame. Guilt. Complicity. Fear. Knowing you won’t be believed. Knowing he won’t be punished or prosecuted or caught. Hearing the narrative your whole life, the victim blaming. The what was she wearing, how much did she drink, did she flirt, she shouldn’t have been there, why didn’t she tell sooner that drips with a combination of ignorance and contempt. All of this is amplified for those of us who have died and survived. We hear them talking about us.

But they don’t know the truth about us.

Our truth is not for men who haven’t walked our path to judge. Men and women who haven’t had to forge a new life after trauma are not equipped to say how or when or why we should speak. Our iron resolve is seen as suspicious, curious. Our mere existence after the fires we’ve walked through makes you question if a match was ever lit. You, the men and women who can’t know the truth, you see our strength and lives well lived and make the ridiculous assumption that rape is no big deal. That being dehumanized and violated is akin to bad sex.

We hear you scoff at and minimize terror. We see you sneer in disbelief when we stand upright and tell our stories. We hear you shame us. Fret over our abuser’s future and his good name. We hear you liken his loss of reputation or job or freedom to a kind of death. We hear you worry about his impending non-death, ignoring the fact that he’s already killed us.

We hear all of this and wonder why we would ever tell.

We hear of men getting a slap on the wrist for raping and choking and penetrating unconscious women. We hear young girls get blamed for their pastor or teacher or neighbor abusing them. We watch institutions get tax breaks while raping altar boys. We see men get promoted and elevated who take from women. We see young boys getting virtual high fives from the courts when their teacher abuses them, instead of the justice they deserve.

We are the forgotten girls and women and boys and men. Those you forsake and dismiss. The ones you try to discredit. The ones you accuse of lying -as if admitting you’ve died at the hands of sick, cruel men is something anyone would voluntarily claim.

Survivors don’t create false enemies. People who have endured battles don’t create fake wars. Those in power will claim the victim status to justify their grasping for more power. They will create enemies out of ghosts and narratives out of lies. They send young men off to fight battles they could never fight themselves. They pat our heads and say they are doing it all for us, then shove us over the cliff as soon as we turn our back. They are using you. And me. And anyone who isn’t in their club.

We are the women and men who say #MeToo. We are the ones who have risen from the ashes of a world that sees us as expendable. A world created by the men grasping at power. A world they enabled and perpetuated.

We are the girls and boys and women who will not allow you to use your patronizing protection of us to justify the abuse of others. You cry What about the women and children! You fein concern for our safety in the Target bathroom, but scoff at the very real scars we show you. You use us to lock up and abuse black men. You drag them behind pick up trucks for whistling at us or hang them from trees for looking at us wrong. You screech from your saccharine coated throats about gangs and immigrants and protecting the women and children but elevate the wealthy white men who rape and beat us with impunity.

You tell us we’re overreacting when you have barely seen a glimpse of our fury. You pretend confusion or ignorance. #MeToo? What is this? Surely this can’t be so? We see you. We see right through you. We see you use us as a shield for your bigotry and supremacy. All while ignoring the real threats. Men like you are the real threat. Men who abused us and raped us. Men who laughed or stood by or shrugged it off. Men who act confused and suspicious about the reality of this world that has existed since the beginning of time. We see you.

We watch you step over the bodies of the girls and women you claim to love while you climb your way to power. Your casual indifference and faux pity is noted.

So is your fear. You are threatened by us. Our #MeToo, our voices, they threaten your grip on power. They shake your hold on oppression. Without us you have no excuse to start wars and shut down progress and lock up innocent men and familes.

We are the sons and daughters of the hysterical women you locked up in asylums. We are the grandchildren of women who were raped by their masters and had their children sold to other men. We are the children of the women who burned their bras and fought for women’s rights. We are the sisters of the woman who marched in the Slut Walks. We are the descendants of the Stonewall riots and the AIDS crisis you refused to address.

We are the daughters of the women who were chased around desks at work. We are the sons and daughters of women who covered their bruises and dried their eyes before the school bus arrived.

We’re the men and women who have our own scars and our own stories and we’re done staying silent and in the shadows. We are the people who will fight til our last breath so that our daughters and sons never have to live with ghosts of their own.

We are all the forgotten ghosts you refuse to acknowledge. Grit and fury is in our DNA.

We will not let their deaths be in vain, those whose lives were stolen by sick men. The ghosts we live with. We will avenge them, not with the blood of men, but with the truth. We will scream their truth until you can’t forget our ghosts either. Until you can’t close your eyes without seeing the faces of the lives snuffed out by sick and depraved people. Until their stories are your background music too. You will see our ghosts, but more importantly, you will see who rose from their ashes. The survivors. We will speak our truths until your ears bleed from knowing and your brains are seared with our stories. Until you can no longer languish in cruel indifference. Until you can’t unsee the horrors your apathy has enabled.

There is no more peace for you, as long as you pretend not to see. No more allowance for apathy or ignorance when truth is staring you in your face.

No rest for abusers. No refuge for rape apologists and misogynists. No comfort for bigots who use our pain to justify their ends. No refuge for men and women who allow it to continue and minimize it.

We will not quietly go away. We will not feel shame. Or guilt. We will not be scared from standing and marching and fighting. We will speak our truths, their truths. We will speak it until we can speak no more.

Like this:

It wasn’t really a statement. Or a question. It was an accusation. It was two days after the election. Two days after we elected an openly racist man who bragged about sexually assaulting women. My anger had apparently ruffled my acquaintance.

Yeah. I was angry. Livid. Sad. Terrified.

But I didn’t say any of that. I offered a smile. I tilted my head and I placated and soothed. My voice curled around words that I didn’t mean. My head screamed at him in anger Why are you NOT angry?

My soft voice and my traitorous smile were on autopilot. I blame my conditioning, but that’s really just a cop out.

We were raised on polite and nice. The Golden Rule and “how do you do’s.” We were taught that politics and religion should never be discussed in polite company.

Our politics are shrouded in coded language. Abuses are minimized to appease our delicate sensitivities. Our history is whitewashed and the unseemly parts of our country’s past have been snuffed out. We place niceness and civility at a premium over humanity and reality. We’ve told ourselves lies about who we are for so long that some of us are only now waking up to who we really are.

Our “Greatness” is a facade. False bravado. A lie.

And we are angry. We are witnessing corruption and hate and Nazis marching in the streets and walking the halls of the West Wing.We’ve been told to calm down. Our jokes are crude, our language too coarse, our response too rude. What happened to civility? What happened to being nice? You seem really angry…

What they really mean is we’re making them feel uncomfortable. We’re shaking their foundation of normality. We’re holding up a mirror to things they are determined to ignore.

This premium on politeness and civility has been a tool for evil throughout history. Pedophiles and rapists are super nice while grooming their victims. Nice allows preachers to rape, priests to molest, and still hold positions of power. Nice tells children to be seen and not be heard. Keeping victims in a cage of nice and polite serves the perpetrators well. Nice is the easiest and most inconsequential thing to be. Nice people kick puppies and nice people turned in their neighbors when the gestapo came to town.

Nice is apathy. Niceness likes to act indignant in the face of incivility, entitled to pleasantries and decorum. Nice will admonish that we will hand over the election to the tyrants because tyrants will be less evil if we just act more civil, right? Civility and niceness is a tool of supremacy. Politeness in the face of atrocities is begging for more atrocities. Tyrants weaponize a nice populace. Nice will write op-eds about the loss of civility in public discourse.

There was never any civility. Just the appearance of it. We are not civilized. We just like to pretend we are.

The civilized don’t shoot unarmed citizens. The civilized don’t let a city suffer with leaden water for four years. The civilized don’t steal land from Native people and slaughter them in the name of “civilization.” The civilized don’t perform medical experiments on marginalized people. The civilized don’t steal from the poor to help the wealthy. The civilized don’t turn water cannons on native people. The civilized don’t turn away people seeking safety from countries being torn apart because of our government’s actions. The civilized don’t let thousands of people die after a hurricane. The civilized don’t lie about everything that matters and they sure as hell don’t let lies go unanswered in press conferences. The civilized don’t try to humanize white supremacists in think pieces. The civilized don’t legislate hate in the name of religious freedom. The civilized don’t try to suppress voters. The civilized aren’t afraid of the people’s voice. The civilized don’t elect racists or pussy grabbers or vote for child molesters or elect men who assault reporters. The civilized don’t put children in cages. The civilized don’t dehumanize groups of people to gin up hate and votes. The civilized don’t shrug at mass shootings. The civilized don’t place a higher priority on guns over children’s lives. The civilized don’t put children in cages. The civilized don’t impose their religious beliefs on other people. The civilized don’t let billionaires determine the future and well being of a population of people. The civilized don’t rip babies and children from their parent’s arms. The civilized don’t run a prison system that profits off of brown bodies. THE CIVILIZED DON’T PUT CHILDREN IN FUCKING CAGES.

We, the people, are choking on politeness. There’s a collective lump in our throats that we can’t swallow any longer. There will be no more sympathy for the devil and no comfort for those who aide him.

The devil puts children in cages and the devil lies to reporters every day and the devil argues about what, actually, is a cage? The devil equivocates on details to deflect from atrocity. The devil deals in false equivalencies. The devil tells you to to wait. The devil tells you to be more devoted to order than to justice, that the absence of tension is preferable to a positive peace. The devil tells you to stay quiet and to numb your mind and the devil wants you to be easily distracted. The devil wants you to feel overwhelmed and hopeless.

Fuck the devil. The devil is no match for the righteous anger of people who are awake. The devil’s got nothing on angry mothers who see children in cages. The devil has made a fatal flaw in thinking we wouldn’t care, in thinking that our love for our fellow humans is performative. The devil thought that deep down, we were all just as hateful and racist as him. The devil has never known love that will make you shake off comfort and fight. The devil has only ever fought for himself. The devil can’t fathom the fire and the fury of millions of people who have had enough of hate.

Make no mistake. Love is at the root of the incivility that elites in DC are bemoaning. Love is at the root of every protest and every rally that is spreading like wildfire across an angry nation. Love is about fighting for people who are suffering and fighting for what’s right and demanding better from our country. Love isn’t positive slogans and positive thinking and “just be happy.” Love without fight is a farce. Preaching positivity without fighting evil is a pyramid scheme of tripe. Those at the top will thrive. Those at the bottom will be crushed by their weight. The industry of positivity is profiting off of you feeling good about doing nothing of importance. The weak and the marginalized were never sheltered by good vibes. They oppressed were never freed by feel good schtick.

Stop hiding behind positive slogans.

Stop requesting politeness in a time of evil.

Stop lamenting nice when children are in cages.

Stop demanding civility when families are being torn apart.

You seem really angry.

Yeah. We are. And there will be no sympathy for the devil here. No tolerance for those who do his bidding. No shelter for those who luxuriate in safety and privilege and tell us to calm down. No consolation for those who are feeling discomfort for the first time and think that their discomfort equals oppression. Get used to harsh truth and in your face reality. We can no longer placate your feelings. You will have to learn how to self soothe in times like this.

Like this:

Emotional labor is unseen. It’s the energy women spend managing other’s feelings and emotions, making people comfortable, or living up to society’s expectations… the barrage of expectations we feel from the time we’re told to be nice and polite while boys are told not to cry. It’s a thing. It’s also a weight carried by some femmes and some men, especially if they’re the main caregiver in the family.

But this is not about that kind of emotional labor.

When I read Cara Delevigne’s account of her harassment at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, I felt every word. When I heard the recording of Ambra Battilana Gutierrez pleading with Harvey Weinstein to let her leave, I felt it in my bones.

In the words these women bravely shared with us, I heard everything they felt. The fear. The confusion. The disbelief. The shame. All of those feelings are a cocktail women are forced to swallow- all while reacting, deflecting, minimizing, and smiling because maybe you misunderstood his intentions, and fighting or plotting escape.

Most of us have sipped this putrid cocktail. Many of us have had it forced down our throats more times than we can even remember. My first time? I was three years old. My “Harvey Weinstein” was a sick young man of 18 who likely had his own trauma story. My young brain went into survival mode and I lived with it like an ugly stain I chose not to look at.

What I experienced at three years old was traumatic. The things I experienced as a teen and a young woman weren’t traumatic. They were your average, run of the mill, everyday sexist things. Some small, some not so small. Awkward moments of being treated like an object but not understanding what was happening. Infuriating infractions against my autonomy. Most of them weren’t scary, but they were all tinged with fear. And they are nearly universal experiences that girls and women go through. Average. Run of the mill. Because that’s how insidious this problem is. We’re used to it. Except, we’re really not and we really never will be.

Grabbing our body. Cornering us in a room or office or hallway. Making suggestive comments. Scanning our bodies while grinning sadistically. The kisses forced on us while we push away and clench our lips, our teeth ready to bite. The demeaning remarks. Belittling our intellect or experience or our right to be in the room. Talking to us like we’re children when we had to grow up at the age of 3 or 8 or 16… the assumption that we don’t know things when our knowledge of things unspoken would make your blood run cold. And still having to coddle your knowledge because we need our job, or our kid needs to play on your team, or we need our car fixed, or insert any fucking reason because I’m tired.

All of this is emotional labor. It’s the adding up of little things and placing them on the spectrum of bullshit that women go through at the hands of sick or entitled or clueless men. It’s reliving our experiences when a friend confides hers. Or when a plot line in a movie goes there. It’s watching the debate and feeling our body grow hot because we know what it’s like to have a man try to intimidate you by standing too close. It’s watching Billy Bush play wingman and fuming because we’ve seen that bro code play out like a bad movie on repeat.

It’s getting threats online. And every woman you know who blogs or is involved in activism online also gets threats. It’s the fact that your friends have a detailed protocol they follow when harassment and threats become serious, and they’ll share it with you like it’s their grandmother’s chocolate cake recipe.

It’s remembering that back in 2014 you read about journalist Amanda Hess and her online stalker. About how she had to carry her case files with her when she travelled because his threats followed her to every town she visited and she needed to be able to alert local police and show them proof BECAUSE OF COURSE SHE HAD TO SHOW THEM PROOF. And three years later not a damn thing’s changed because Twitter and Facebook are cool with rape and death threats. It’s realizing that all of this means that women are expendable and even well known and respected journalists get shrugs of indifference. All of this makes us feel some kind of way… Tired. Angry. Frustrated. Fed up.

It’s the emotional labor of feeling all these things every single time we watch a man help himself to one of us. The sisterhood of We’ve Had Enough Of This Shit.

It’s the drip drip of everyday sexism that is more on time than the trains and more relentless than Harvey Weinstein in a bath robe.

There’s nothing more paradoxically mundane and infuriating than someone who thinks he’s clever saying and doing the same thing you’ve been hearing since you were 3 or 8 or 16.

And it’s the guilt. The guilt for being there. For laughing. For not leaving sooner. For not fighting hard enough. For not actually biting his lip even though we were this close. And the guilt we find ourselves accepting from the men who take from us. Don’t embarrass me. C’mon, I’ve been so nice to you. Guilt because we’re conditioned to carry emotional labor for others and our inclination to people please supersedes our safety for a few minutes, and then more guilt because we know it’s sick to feel guilty for hurting our abuser’s feelings.

It’s when badass women write about their harassment, their abuse, their rape. The healing and strength you get from reading it. And knowing that every time they write about it there’s a sub-reddit forming around their words to discredit and threaten them. That her unburdening and words of healing will likely just heap more abuse on her own plate.

It’s the time we have to spend assuring men that we know they’re not all like this. Again. And feeling equal parts sad and angry that it will take a whole chorus of us to explain it because one woman’s words have never been enough and in these moments his feelings are more important than the shit we’ve lived with and the shit we’re still reeling from. We have to press pause to explain that we know it’s not all men. We have to hold off on what we’re trying to say about abuse and assault and sexism -that’s pretty fucking important by the way- to massage a man’s feelings. Again.

It’s the fact that when the Weinsteins of the world are exposed, we still have to moderate our tone and keep our emotions in check or we’ll be labelled with the female malady of hysteria.

It’s the deafening silence of every man who doesn’t call out another guy for the rape joke, or the office banter about the new girl, or the locker room talk. Because every time you laughed or didn’t call him out or didn’t step in to intervene you became an enabler. Your silence makes you complicit. Do better.

It’s seeing that things don’t change. That these stories echo the stories of your mom getting chased around her desk in 1977. And she couldn’t quit her job because the fridge was already empty and it wasn’t pay day yet so she would survive on cigarettes and adrenaline so you and your sister could eat. It’s seeing that in 40 years the only thing that’s changed is HR has to pretend to care.

It’s the relentless onslaught of dudes who feel compelled to comment on each story of abuse and trauma in unhelpful ways. Who love to muse that women should have spoken up sooner, or women should have prevented it, or women shouldn’t be victims. Who can’t seem to understand that their job is to Listen. Stay silent. Or go after the predators. And with every chin scratch and psuedo-intellectual analysis they are kicking dirt in the face of every woman who has been dealing with this shit since they were 3 or 8 or 16.

Some of the things that happen to us are inconveniences. But because they are so tied up in the big things and sometimes they are hints of the traumas we’ve collected, they register. Because they all live on the same spectrum of abusive behavior they aren’t easily dismissed. What your bro sees as a joke, is our memory of what we’ve experienced or what our friends have whispered to us. Our lives and the onslaught of bullshit we put up with is your punchline. Even the small things take up time and energy. They make us pause and assess. They make us document or take screenshots or vent in private conversations with our girl friends so we can not snap at the next man that crosses our path because we’re tired.

I’m tired of laboring under all of this.

I’m tired of watching women go through it over and over again. I’m tired of the memories that flood my mind every time a story breaks and the visceral reaction when I see men dismiss women’s experiences. I’m tired of trudging through this virulent sludge on the regular, while men act shocked every time they see a woman with dirty shoes.

This is the emotional labor that sticks to me and buries itself into my psyche. The labor that feels like it’s siphoned off by men like Cosby and Ailes and OReilly and Weiner and Weinstein and names you’ve never heard of because this isn’t just a sickness of the rich and famous. This is a sickness of a culture that sees women as commodities. That sees us as punchlines. As unreliable witnesses to our own experiences. It’s the emotional toll of watching men shake their heads but say nothing. It’s the emotional work we have to do to not be bitter or angry or hardened. It’s the multitude of ways we are co-opted by the society that encourages it, enables it and even glorifies it.

Men, if you’ve been wondering why we’re in your face about it, why we have no more tolerance for dismissals and deflections, no more sympathy for your shock or surprise, why we won’t soothe your dismay or feed your ego when our bodies have been slandered, this is why.

Like this:

“I was asleep before… that’s how we let it happen. They suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary.”

This is Offred’s stark warning.

A narration of regret.

Her name’s not really Offred. It’s Jane. Or June. Or something that I can’t remember because her name no longer matters. She is no longer a human with an identity, she is the property of Fred. And she is the main character in Hulu’s series The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel.

Offred is a Handmaid in Gilead, the religious fundamentalist reincarnation of the United States. After a terrorist attack and environmental disasters left the republic weakened, a strong-arm theocracy took hold. Patriarchal control was the new order. Women, no longer allowed to work, read, vote or hold property. Children, taken at will from parents who refuse to conform. Traitors, hung along the river, government spies around every corner.

In this dystopian theocracy, women no longer have choices. They are assigned roles by the almighty government. The small number of women who are still fertile become Handmaids, their job to produce children for the elite. They are human incubators. Vessels. Possessions of the privileged. Routinely subjected to state sanctioned rape every month in the name of glorious and holy conception.

Blessed be the fruit of the non-consenting womb.

The Handmaid’s Tale serves as a warning, as many great works of art do. With it’s desaturated colors and stark visuals, the horrors on the screen should shock us.

But they don’t.

Instead of shock, recognition. We see it, how it could happen. The clarity is so unnerving that many women can’t even bear to watch the show.

Exaggeration? Fear? Perhaps. But possible? Yes.

Possible, because our country has done these things before.

Our great country likes to practice the art of selective amnesia. We prefer to whitewash our hateful past and water down our history books and our conscience.

Those who never learn unadulterated history are doomed to repeat it.

In our great country, humans were bought and sold like livestock. We stripped them of their names. Their identity tied up in the men who owned them. Slave women were expected to produce more slaves to keep the fields stocked with blood and sweat. When they failed, they were beaten and sometimes sold as damaged goods. We excused every bit of this with religious text and disgusting theories on race. We denied their humanity and we denied them their names and heritage.

My name is Offred. I had a name before…

Wives in the antebellum south looked the other way while their husbands raped slaves. Their jealous rage directed at the victims in the form of beatings. Their lack of voice or control unleashed on slave girls while their husbands continued to rape at will. An uncomfortable fact of life for the privileged women was a soul stripping act of violence for the slave girls and women.

Blessed be the ability to control through fear and domination and violence.

Lynchings were community events. The town’s people would gather to cheer and celebrate torture and murder. Smug words of consternation. Them boys should have listened to their master. Them girls should know what’s good for them. The bodies would hang for days. Weeks. White supremacy has sadistic ways of making sure you remember. He shouldn’t have been driving with a broken tail light. She shouldn’t have questioned his authority and lit that cigarette.

You don’t read much about the lynchings and the rapes in the history books though. Nothing more than a sanitized mention before moving on to the battles and the bayonets, the blood on metal tips washes down easier than the blood dripping from a tree branch.

It’s not possible to go back to such dark times, we say. But did you see the evening news?

Another black boy’s name is trending on Twitter and another murder is excused. We shake our heads as we sip our coffee.

It’s not possible, we say, as we press our “I Voted” sticker onto our shirt and take a selfie to show proof of our civic duty.

It’s not possible, we say, as we watch men behind closed doors decide that we are pre-existing conditions. Our rape, our pregnancy, our broken jaw from a closed fist, all preexisting conditions. A tax on our bodies and our psyches and our wombs.

It’s not possible, we say, as we watch bills being debated on state house floors. Bills that infantilize us. Forced vaginal ultrasounds… because we need a wand shoved into our cervix to grasp the idea that we’re pregnant.

It’s not possible, we say, but politicians keep saying rape is only rape if there are bruises and marks. Because men raping wives, and boyfriends raping girlfriends, and date rape, and victims freezing because that is biologically the mechanism that takes over when being assaulted in the most personal way, is not “really rape” according to these men. And the only scars they care about are the ones that are visible and verifiable.

It’s not possible, we say. But lawmakers are trying to make us get consent from a man before getting an abortion. Because of course our bodies should be regulated by the men in our lives. Of course our husband/boyfriend/father has more say about our life changing decision.

Shall I get my rapist to sign a permission slip, dear congressman?

What about my abusive husband who keeps me pregnant to keep me imprisoned in his sick, controlling world? Shall he sign it in my blood?

It’s not possible, we say, as we scroll through social media and wonder how we got here. But it is possible. You just don’t recognize it because you didn’t live it, and your ancestors don’t bear the scars, and the color of your skin and your religion protect you from what’s happening now.

What you don’t necessarily see or feel or fear every day is happening. And eventually it will touch you and yours if you continue to sit in your comfortable apathy.

Our false sense of security and privileged ignorance will one day be our yoke. The bliss of being able to turn the page or tune out or pretend like it isn’t happening… is akin to sipping iced tea on the plantation porch, fanning ourselves and talking about the weather while we listen to the snaps of a whip hitting flesh in the fields below us. We avert our eyes and pretend like we don’t hear the cries of anguish. My, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?

It’s all possible. Gilead is not just a dystopian fiction. It’s a warning. A preview of what inaction and unchecked power can do. The likeliness is still a question. But by the time we’re sure, by the time we realize our rights have been stripped away, it’s usually too late.

I was asleep before… that’s how we let it happen.

Corporations have more humanity than their female employees, so says the court. Their religious belief or how they interpret ancient text trumps my healthcare decisions and what my doctor and I decide is best. Their profit is their humanity, their fetish for patriarchal control is their soul. And it’s worth more than the humanity that is present between my heart and my ovaries and my mind.

Personhood bills are popping up across states like a sick game of autonomy Whack A Mole. Bills that threaten to make my reproductive choices nonexistent. No pill. No IUD. No sex. Good girls don’t have sex for pleasure. Good girls only have sex to make babies. Good girls will produce as many babies as her body is physically capable of. Good girls don’t get roofied by Cliff Huxtable. Good girls don’t get raped. Good girls don’t make accusations and make people uncomfortable. Good. Girls. Don’t. Question. Authority.

We have men in power who pledge allegiance to their scripture, not the country. They eschew the basic tenet of separation of church and state, the very foundation of our democracy and Constitution. The words of the founding fathers inconsequential when holy words direct you to fund torture of gay teens and deny AIDS prevention and force heartbroken women who’ve suffered loss to pay to bury their miscarried remains. Because patriarchy and purity culture is nothing if not creative in their ways to retain control of women.

We have a members of The Council for National Policy, a super secret group filled with extremists and Dominionists pulling the strings of government as we speak. Their goal is to turn our country into a theocracy, their strategy is to manipulate the government from within. Key members have funded, aided and staffed the current administration. They, along with The Heritage Foundation, have been working for decades on projects like Citizens United and school choice which is coded language for government funding of religious schools. The Prince family, the DeVos family, Conway, Bannon, Mercer, Koch. Do these names ring a bell? They are cozying up to white supremacists and other religious zealots to make sure your children get a hefty dose of fundamentalist branded God™ in the classroom.

Blessed be the righteousness of money to gain power…

They tell us those “other” people are evil. They’ve come here to rape us and to plant bombs in our malls and take our jobs, and it works because fear is the most effective means of control.

They pass “Religious Freedom Laws” which is cool kid speak for “we hate gays so we are going to hide behind our cherry picked religious text.”

They tell us it’s not a crime when unarmed black men and women are shot. They shush our horror with platitudes and lies.

Blessed be the electorate willing to believe modern day lynching is somehow justifiable.

Blessed be the gerrymandered districts that make voter suppression of black people so much easier than the good ‘ol days when we just spit on them and burned crosses in front of their house and beat them and killed them.

Blessed be the prisons where we can lock people up for minor crimes and keep people away from their jobs and their families and their lives because they can’t pay court fines . And the private prison system that feeds the cycle of poverty and gives us our modern day slave labor and serfdom and keeps rich men richer and poor men poorer.

Blessed be all the people who spread the propaganda so willfully… women are not to be believed or trusted… black people are thugs… gay people are sinful… transgender people are predators waiting in the Target bathroom to attack our women and children… authority is to be respected no matter what… we shouldn’t question a person in uniform… we shouldn’t question those in power… we should be enraged at a football player kneeling during the national anthem but stay silent while unarmed black men are shot.

Blessed be those who repeat the words of control and manipulation and authoritarianism.

Blessed be those who confuse “respect the office of the presidency” with blind loyalty, who play Candy Crush instead of reading the news, who think that apathy to racism is not as bad as being a full on racist. Who excuse “low key” racism with a shrug and feign ignorance.

Blessed be the patriots who think voting is the sum total of their civic duty, who think that our democracy is unbreakable and checks and balances will always save it, who don’t want to offend so they stay silent when they see atrocities, who not only allow it to happen, but aid and abet it.

This is the warning. Too late happens while you sleep. The effects not fully realized until the point of no return is but a speck in the rearview mirror.

“It’s not possible,” should not be the last gasp of democracy.

Are you awake?

I would love for you to join my Stop Sexism Facebook group that is part of The Good Men Project’s Social Interest Groups. Jeremy McKeen and I run the group and moderate discussions on sexism and hold weekly conference calls. Please click HERE and join if you’d like to be a part of the discussion!

Like this:

A guy walks up to a girl in a bar. She’s laughing with her friends, engrossed in conversation. He slides in next to her to introduce himself. Offers her a drink. I’m just here to hang with my friends she says more than once. He proceeds to ask her “get to know you” questions, ignores her icy stare. Oblivious to her friends rolling their eyes. He appears immune to her Not interested‘s and her No thank you‘s. Finally, she sighs, I HAVE A BOYFRIEND. He backs away grudgingly, defensively, hands in the air, It’s cool, it’s cool. I got it.

Her rebuffs weren’t enough. Her refusals were dismissed. It was clear that what she wanted wasn’t of much concern to him. But another man’s woman? That’s a record scratch. A stop sign. A no trespassing sign.

This story isn’t unusual. It’s not even rare. Most women at some point have played the boyfriend card to fend off an aggressive guy.

Not all men have to hear the boyfriend excuse to accept a “No.” Many men approach women humbly and respectfully. But the reality is that far too many men are the aggressive guy with the selective hearing. It’s disheartening, frustrating, and at times… scary.

It’s not always violent or abusive. Most often it is vague and hard to put your finger on. But our society is constantly telling men they have rights to us. That they own us. This message isn’t shouted or barked. No, like most effective messages it’s subtle. Implied. It’s in our everyday interactions. But it’s there, coloring our language and our attitudes and our traditions. It’s the pervasive, implied entitlement in casual words and actions that we accept and absorb because we are so accustomed to it we don’t even recognize it.

Ownership. Women are property. Men are entitled to us. Society is unconcerned with our agency and autonomy.

It’s tradition and it’s doctrine. It’s history and it’s gospel.

It’s the marrying off of daughters as a transaction. A young girl whittled down to the equivalent of a goat and an acre of land.

It’s women being the spoils of war.

It’s women being categorized as either the virgin or the whore.

Most men don’t walk around looking at women as property. That’s not how this works. But it’s there, implied. It’s woven into our culture. Passed down like a defective gene.

It’s not just the persistent guy in the bar. It’s the guy who tells us to smile. As if our expression is there for him to dictate. Our mood, his to determine.

It’s the man who thinks he has the right to catcall a woman because she is walking down the street. And then thinks he has the right to get angry if she doesn’t respond in the way he thinks she should.

It’s the shock and disdain for a woman who curses. It’s not lady like. It’s unbecoming. It’s trashy. No. Admonishing a grown woman as if she’s a child is unbecoming.

It’s the “Friend-zone.” The place where hard-up guys and their precocious desires go to die. Angry that they are denied access to someone they were friendly with. I was so nice to her, why wouldn’t she have sex with me? As if being cool means they should automatically have rights to us.

It’s the seething hate directed at every woman who has a large online presence. A platform, a big following, a blue checkmark next to her name – all are cause for threats. It’s the armies of men who troll, looking for powerful women to go after. Who have rabid anger for women they’ve never even met. Why? For moving into their space. For taking up their oxygen. For getting attention and followers and likes. They are threatened by it. They feel less powerful when they see a powerful woman. So they try to control her, bully her, intimidate her. They try to drive her off social media and sometimes out of a job.

It’s the looks of disgust or the comments when a woman is breastfeeding in public. Her breasts should be used to sell Carl’s Jr. burgers or to entice or to entertain. But using them for their intended purpose is disgusting. It’s utilitarian and not serving the greater male population in any way so put those things away, you exhibitionist whore.

We are here to accentuate. Complement. To be arm candy or stay quietly in the background. We should be easy going, but not easy. We should laugh easily, but not too loudly.

We should be soft and sweet and curved in all the right places. But not too curvy. Unless that’s what is desired by the men we meet. The goalpost of what is desirable is constantly moving so we must read magazines and scour pop culture to see what’s what. You see, we are complicit in our own servitude. It’s part of our DNA as well.

We should speak demurely. Speaking loudly, projecting our voice is an affront. We should calibrate our voice to precisely the tone that is pleasing to male ears. And for the love of all things nasty, please don’t laugh too loud.

Our bodies are commodities. Our sexuality is for other’s to copulate to. Our pureness to be held up as saintly. Our reproduction legislated by old white men who couldn’t find an ovary or a female orgasm if they had a GPS.

It’s male journalists frothing every time Chelsea Clinton speaks or wins an award. Their condescending laments laced with the fear of another ambitious woman coming dangerously close to that glass ceiling. Their words dripping with contempt. How dare she be visible or audible when they had other ideas. Stay in your lane, Chelsea.

It’s the pat on the head, the unsolicited advice, the let me tell you how you really feel because my male perspective is more valid and more right, ok sweetheart?

It’s telling a woman to calm down because her outburst or her fire or her anger make it so much harder to rein her in.

It’s the stealthing that turns consensual sex into sexual assault, and the online chat rooms that instruct bros how to do it, and the judges who will laugh it off or brush it off or dole out a slap on the wrist with a wink, and now we have one more fucking thingto warn our daughters about.

It’s the men who help themselves to parts of our bodies as we make our way through a crowd or through the office or across campus.

It’s our lovers, the men we trust and love. They think nothing of laying down a guilt trip if we refuse sex. After all, what right do we have to consider our own mood/desires/feelings? Our bodies should be open for business when he needs it, the moment he needs it. After all, we love him, right? C’mon baby, you say you love me but you aren’t acting like it right now. And they don’t understand or see that their pressure and guilt is added to the pile of male needs and desires we’ve spent a lifetime collecting and being held responsible for.

We watch young girls, on the brink of womanhood who are ogled and leered at. Men, with their shirts straining against their dad-bods, scanning every inch of her. Oblivious to her discomfort. Unconcerned that she is still just a child. They act like they don’t see how their hot gaze makes her squirm. Making her feel equal parts dirty and self conscious and guilty. You see, she learned long ago in school that how she dresses is responsible for how men and boys act. But they’re oblivious to her tugging uncomfortably at her clothes because they don’t see her as a person and they’ve been taught that it’s harmless to do these things and it’s not big deal, it’s just guys being guys and geez, stop overreacting, wouldya?

We’ve heard the song, the one that has been in the background our whole lives. The one that tells us we’re the temptress, the siren of the sea. We’re Eve, licking the apple from our wet lips wearing nothing but a wicked grin. That we’re the built-in excuse for male aggression and anger and frustration and missteps. A convenient scapegoat for society’s ills.

We’re supposed to be “a lady in the street, but a freak in the bed.” Unless he’s not into that kind of thing, in which case we better figure that shit out and accommodate before he decides to dispose of us and tells his friends that we’re just a dirty whore.

We are not your property.

You don’t own us. You are not entitled to our bodies or our minds or our emotional labor.

It’s ownership when men get angry at the fat girl and call her names. How dare she go out in the world in a way that’s not pleasing to his eye?

It’s ownership when they scream at the transgender woman who doesn’t fit their idea of what a woman “should” be. And they’re going to make damn sure she knows it by their voice or their sneer or their laughter or their fist.

It’s ownership when dudes ask a lesbian if they can “get in on that action” or when they wink, “give me a chance to change your mind.” Because it’s really not about her identity and being who she is, it’s about them getting off.

We are not your participation trophies. We are not your conquest or your ego boost.

We are not here for you to decide how we should act/talk/smile/laugh/look/live.

Our role in the home or the board room or online is not yours to define.

Our daughters are not your son’s distractions.

Our wholeness is not a threat to your existence.

Our minds and bodies are tired of this game so if you could wake up and see that we’re not asking you to feel guilty or to drag you down, that would be great. We’re asking you to listen and to believe us and to help us make it stop.

Help us make it stop with the young girl getting dress coded because her body is a distraction to the boys.

Help us make it stop so that when she tells her teacher about a boy making a rape joke, she doesn’t get the “Boys will be boys” retort that tells her that her fears and safety are secondary to boys having fun and blowing off steam.

Help us make it stop because she will learn before she’s even out of puberty that grown men will take from her, whether it’s the lingering stares or the hand that rests on her shoulder for too long or some other innocuous gesture that she can’t put her finger on but she knows it’s not right. Help us before she goes off to college and she tells herself “boys will be boys” when a drinking game goes too far and she finds herself going from laughing and playing along to being victimized but feeling like she deserved it because she is just repeating what she’s seen and heard her whole life. Boys can’t control themselves. Their actions are just a response to you. You should have known better/done better.

Help us. Recognize when you see ownership, in all its forms. Tell your sons and your daughters and your coworkers and your bosses and your bros.

Help us because it’s this subtle sense of ownership that feeds the violence. It’s the little moments that add up and build up and give permission to a man to touch, to hit, to rape, to kill. It’s systemic and institutionalized ownership that allows lawmakers and judges and police officers to question a rape victim’s level of sobriety or her past sexual history or how much the rapist might suffer in prison so we really should give him a slap on the wrist because he is a preppy white rapist with a bright future.

Help us amplify this message. Help us stop the cycle of entitlement.

We are not your bitch, your slut, your problem. We are not your excuse, your reason, your burden.

Like this:

Dear Mr. Trump… can I call you Mr. Trump? Is that ok? I want you to be happy, that’s very important to me.

Before I get started, let me say this letter isn’t from all women. The Trumpettes surely won’t approve of this message. But this is from most women.

We see right through you. We have all known you at some point. Your ways are not unfamiliar to us. We see through you because we’ve been dealing with you our whole lives.

We heard you call women pigs. And disgusting. And stupid. And bimbos.

We watched as you called a former Ms. Universe “Ms. Piggy” and then spent four days continuing to insult her.

We see your weakness. Your lust for attention at any cost, your need to denigrate women. We see all of it. And we’re mad.

Yes. We’re mad. And fired up. And here’s the thing about us… we can be bitches.

Gone are the days where we question our power or our influence. We are strong. Smart. We know our worth and it doesn’t reside in the size of our bras or our skinny jeans. We build each other up. We have our sister’s backs. And our brother’s. So when you took on the former Ms. Universe, you took on all of us.

And right now you’ve got a lot of angry women to contend with. And let me remind you, Mr. Trump… hell hath no fury like a pissed off woman who’s tired of this sexist bullshit.

We heard you when you said we should “look for another place to work” if we experience workplace sexual harassment. Your non-solution illustrates either your lack of understanding or lack of concern. Or both. Your attitude and ignorance on this is stunning. Your response, pathetic. We see you, and we see someone who’s in over their head.

We watched you interrupt a woman 51 times during a 90 minute debate. While the better qualified, more knowledgeable woman was talking, you attempted to bulldoze right over her. We all know this game. It’s called male privilege. And it doesn’t look good on you, Mr. Trump. It makes you look weak. We see you, and we see a man who is so threatened by a woman speaking that you can’t even bear to let her finish. Sad.

And we see it rampant throughout your campaign and your proposed policies. It’s in your paltry maternity leave proposal that leaves out fathers and LGBTQ and adoptive parents. And when you say that women who seek abortions should be punished. And when you refuse to consider supporting equal pay for women.

Your latest ad, in which your daughter, beaming with privilege and pride, says “being a mother is the most important job a woman can have.” didn’t go over so well with us, Mr. Trump.

We are different, us women. We are not a homogenous army of fem-bots. We have different interests, goals and lives. There is more to us than motherhood. Some of us revel in motherhood. Some of us don’t want to have children. And some of us can’t have children. Our status as mothers has nothing to do with our worth. This ad, coupled with your policies show that you are tone deaf to the reality that women face and point to an antiquated attitude. One that keeps women as the caregivers and leaves men out of that equation.

We see you. And we see a man who has no business representing our interests in the Oval Office.

We heard you say no one would vote for Carly Fiorina “because of her face.”

We roll our eyes when we saw you try to dismiss Megyn Kelly after she had the nerve to ask you questions. At a debate. “Blood coming out of her wherever” was not lost on us. Most of us remember hearing such comments in Middle School.